Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE DAY OF THE SIGN MO-WA-THE,—the mother of Tahn-te, drew with her brush of yucca fibre the hair-like lines of black on the ceremonial bowl she was decorating. Tahn-te, slender, and nude, watched closely the deft manipulations of the crude tools; — the medicine bowls for the sacred rites were things of special interest to him — for never in the domestic arrangement of the homes of the terraces did he see them used. He thought the serrated edges better to look at than the smooth lines of the home dishes. " Why can I not know what is that put into them ? " he demanded. " Only the Ancient Ruler and the medicine-men know the sacred thing for ' Those Above.' " He wriggled like a beautiful bronze snake to the door and lay there, his chin propped on his hands, staring out across the plain — six hundred feet below their door — only a narrow ledge — scarcely the length of the boy's body: — divided the wall of their home from the edge of the rock mesa. Mo-wa-the glanced at him from time to time. " What thoughts do you think that you lie still like a kiva snake with your eyes open? " she said at last. " Yes, I think," he acknowledged with the gravity of a ceremonial statement, " These days I am' thinking thoughts — and on a day I will tell them." " When a boy has but few summers his thoughts are not yet his own," reminded Mo-wa-the. " They are here — and here 1 " his slender brown hand touched his head, and heart,— " How does any other take them out — with a knife? Are they not me?" " Boy! The old men shall take you to the kiva where all the youth of the clan must be taught how to grow straight and think straight." " Will they teach me there whose son I am?" he demanded. Her head bent lower over the sacred bowl, but she made no lines. He saw...